The House Oversight Committee hearing from Wednesday on the Biden family's influence peddling was quite the nearly eight hour experience. There was a lot of talk about lies, especially as it applies to the testimony shared by key witnesses Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, both former business associates of Hunter Biden. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) certainly had a bizarre exchange with Bobulinski, as she asked him what crimes he's seen President Joe Biden commit, only to cut him off when she didn't like his answer and insisted "RICO is not a crime," something she's even doubled down on. One member in particular, however, Rep. Shontel Brown (D-OH) knew something about lies. She used the entirety of her time not to ask any of the witnesses any questions, not even Lev Parnas, who had been called by the minority, but to spew a series of falsehoods against former and potentially future President Donald Trump, all while ironically speaking about "indisputable facts."
Rather quickly, Brown launched into a rant about Trump, presenting a rather one-sided view, which was, as Benny Johnson so aptly put it, "a total [Trump Derangement Syndrome] meltdown."
Every word from Brown screamed far-left bias, but a considerable amount of her remarks were all flat-out wrong, and have been thoroughly refuted and debunked, to be addressed in the order she made them she points.
While Democrats, including the DNC and Biden reelection campaign have loved to play up concerns that Trump will be, as Brown put it, "a self-declared dictator on day one," he was very clearly joking and himself also made clear they were made "in jest" when asked by Fox Business' Maria Bartiromo about such remarks.
The congresswoman's next words were then to claim that Trump "wants to terminate the Constitution," but this was all early on, and the ridiculousness didn't stop there, as she also similarly claimed that by meeting with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Trump was "embrac[ing]" him to "to discuss their diabolical plans to destroy our democracy."
Brown's claims didn't just span comments and actions from recent days, weeks, or months, but also from years ago. Yup, she brought up the 2017 white supremacy rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, describing Trump as "the one who called neo-Nazis carrying tiki torches chanting 'Jews will not replace us' good people." She couldn't even get the phrasing correct, though, as the debunked narrative claimed Trump called them "fine people."
In reality, the full context of his remarks shows Trump was very clearly referring not referring to neo-Nazis in such a way. He also been talking about people concerned with the removal of statutes. Even more damning to such a false narrative is that Trump made clear "I'm not talking about the neo-Nazis and the white nationalists, because they should be condemned totally--but you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists, okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly."
The truth didn't stop Biden from going with such a narrative in 2020 to win the primary and general election, it's not stopping him in 2024, and it doesn't look to be stopping Brown.
The Charlottesville "fine people" wasn't even the oldest point to address, though. Brown lamented how Trump "called Mexicans rapists," a line from when he announced his campaign in June 2015 to warn about illegal immigration and how Mexico wasn't "sending their best." Sure enough, we've gone from a far more secure border under the Trump administration, to record-high encounters at the wide-open border, as well as the disturbing reality of illegal immigrant crime, including when it comes to rape.
Brown also went on to refer to speak about Trump's "rape victim," in reference to E. Jean Carroll. A jury found Trump had been liable for sexual abuse, though, and Trump is actually suing ABC News and "This Week" anchor George Stephanopoulos for defamation after Stephanopoulos claimed Trump was found "liable for rape."
Returning to yet another debunked narrative that Biden has used, including just earlier this week, Brown claimed Trump "referred to prisoners of war as losers." As another one of the lies about Trump during his administration that just won't die, Trump's opponents claim that he referred to those buried at Normandy as "suckers" and "losers" and also said he didn't want to see them during a 2018 trip, though it was debunked by Snopes.
When it comes to how Trump supposedly "promoted political and physical violence multiple times," she also referenced the specific example of just last weekend, when the Biden reelection campaign took Trump's comments out of context about "a bloodbath" if Trump didn't win the election. Such remarks were clearly meant in the economic sense, specifically the U.S. automotive industry, which makes even more sense given that Trump was in Dayton, Ohio. This is even more clear if one were to see the full remarks of Trump's speech. Not only did Brown get it wrong, she also touted also being from Ohio, which ought to suggest she should especially know better.
Then, Brown got into COVID conspiracies, claiming Trump "originally denied COVID was deadly and eventually suggested testing injecting bleach into our bodies to kill the respiratory virus that took the loss of 1 million people in the United States." Even liberal fact-checkers have acknowledged that no, Trump did not suggest bleach.
Brown also went after Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as did other members of the Committee, some of them looking to compare Kushner to Hunter Biden as a distraction. As we covered before the hearing, though, in an article that was entered into the record during the hearing, "Actually, Jared Kushner and Hunter Biden Are Nothing Alike. Here Are the Facts."
Just in case there's any doubt Brown meant all of this, she launched into a lecture of sorts.
"If any of this sounds crazy, it's because it is. This might sound unbelievable, but it's all true. These are facts, indisputable facts, a thing that is known and proven to be true," she claimed. "This may be a foreign concept to some of my colleagues, but for those of us who still have a relationship with the truth," she continued, adding "his is not an exhaustive list of inappropriate unethical and questionable behavior by the maniacal manipulator of Mar-a-Lago because I could go on, but I only have five minutes yet here we are, again, trying to make sense out of nonsense. I would humbly respectfully ask my Republican colleagues on this committee to stop falling over yourself to win the approval of one, because millions of people are depending on you to defend our delicate democracy," Brown continued before yielding.
Democrat Rep. Shontel Brown has total TDS meltdown 🤣 pic.twitter.com/BAZW3uNHWw
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) March 20, 2024
What relevance were these remarks to the hearing? To begin her unhinged rant, Brown went with the Democratic talking point of "chasing after Russia disinformation campaigns" and claimed House Republicans were "grasping at straws."
The Russian hoax was used by many members throughout the hearing, and, in Rep. Jared Moskowitz's (D-FL) beforehand, given that he memorably showed up in a Vladimir Putin mask, but in Brown's case, it was even more insufferable given her long, easily refutable rant.
Brown did not use the full five minutes of the time allotted, and devoted the remaining seconds to Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who only helped to further push such debunked talking points as he thanked her for providing "that eloquent and compressed recitation of some of what we've lived with over the past few years.
The congresswoman actually responded with a quoted repost, claiming that "[t]he real derangement is overlooking and celebrating everything I listed," though such an accusation quite clearly to address her problematic talking points.
The real derangement is overlooking and celebrating everything I listed https://t.co/Q98DK2lMhf
— Rep. Shontel Brown (@RepShontelBrown) March 20, 2024
